Neowin.net - Microsoft confirms XP right click memory hog problem

Microsoft confirms XP right click memory hog problem

Posted by Steven Parker on 09 May 2003 - 10:40 · 41 comments & 3850 views

Yep, thats right. 3 weeks after we posted the original reposted finding on BugTraq and a day before The Inquirer stumbled across it. It's only fair to say that The Inquirer has beaten us to Microsoft's whisper of acknowledgment and a workaround for this bug, which is -yes, no different to the workaround we posted on 26th of April.

While Microsoft have issued no indication of a patch to correct this problem they have put up an article entitled: Temporary Decrease in Performance Occurs When You Right-Click a File or Folder in Windows Explorer. It appears to have been posted 3 days after our article.

Microsoft says in the note that when you right click a folder using Windows Explorer, the CPU usage flies up to 100% when the shortcut menu is displayed.

That means any file copy operation "may appear to stop responding", "network connection speed may significantly decrease", and streaming operations, like listening to music, can become distorted. I suppose its disappointing to see that a fix is in fact disabling (native) features but we can only hope this is solved in SP2 or a patch. Read more for the workaround.

View: Microsoft Knowledge Base Article - 819101

View: Explorer 100% utilization in Windows XP (26 April 2003)

News source: The Inquirer

Method 1

Turn off the transition effects for menus and ToolTips. To do this, follow these steps:

Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
In Control Panel, double-click Display.
In the Display Properties dialog box, click the Appearance tab.
On the Appearance tab, click Effects.
In the Effects dialog box, click to clear the Use the following transition effect for menus and tooltips check box, and then click OK two times.

Method 2

Click the folder or file that you want (select it) before you right-click it to display the shortcut menu.

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(2 replies) #1 Posted by Quick Reply on 09 May 2003 - 11:15: what would microsoft do without us eh?

#2 Posted by leebobs on 09 May 2003 - 11:23: SP2 may default install so that the work about is enabled..... Don't expect a rush with a fix unless you can show that it causes a security problem

#3 Posted by superrcat on 09 May 2003 - 11:26: well, since the bottom of the KB article has a keyword "kbnofix" i doubt you will see any fix for this.

(1 reply) #4 Posted by Huezo on 09 May 2003 - 11:29: Heh, this bug only takes 50% of my processing power....Multiprocessing Rulez...

(1 reply) #5 Posted by Turge2000 on 09 May 2003 - 12:21: It's only a bug if you plan on right-clicking and leaving the right-click menu up for the rest of the day. Can someone give me a scenario where this is actually a problem?

(3 replies) #6 Posted by chorpeac on 09 May 2003 - 12:29: This is only supposed to happen as the right-click menu is beginning to appear. Not while it is displayed. I wonder if turning off animation fixes this problem? I like the animation and would rather it be fixed. But this may be a solution. Has anyone tried disabling the menu animation?

#7 Posted by hoginhaze on 09 May 2003 - 13:22: I was windering why I don't have this bug . Now I know - usually I turn off all fancy stuff like "Appearance effects" .

(7 replies) #8 Posted by kioria on 09 May 2003 - 13:27: its not appearance effects. i get the same results without the fading of the menus. i think it has something to do with the context menus as well as some appearance issues. anyone tested it on theirs? HOW DO I GET RID OF THESE CONTEXT MENUS? STUPID PROGRAMMERS DON'T PUT on/off ABILITY WITHIN THEIR SOFTWARES. SUCH A NEWBIE STUFF.

(1 reply) #9 Posted by Eth3l on 09 May 2003 - 13:44: I am still wondering why in the right-click menu why my system stalls when the mouse rolls ofer the selection "send-to"

#10 Posted by SirPsychoSexy on 09 May 2003 - 13:58: LOL i never noticed but i never had any problems or anything that i noticed. Hope it will be solved soon.

#11 Posted by naap51stang on 09 May 2003 - 14:08: I had all that junk disabled when I first installed XP when it went RTM. I don't like eye candy........I like STABLE and fast.......to me, all that eye candy does is slow down the computer. By the way......does anyone know if this bug effects ONLY explorer clicks? I have never used windows explorer, I prefer the ontrack program powerdesk 5.0 as my file manager. Been using it for years......unfortunately, ontrack sold it to someone else, probably won't ever be another version

#12 Posted by me101 on 09 May 2003 - 15:39: When I do any install of XP systems, the "transition effects" option is one I definatly switch off as a default, so it really has not affected me in any capacity. Just amazes me that it has taken so long for this bug to appear, considering the amount of beta testing that XP got... It's not as if it's a bug in a display driver for a particular vendor, heck the bug even appears if I turn on the transition effect on this crappy Dell 2350 XP box I am using in work (with "integrated Intel graphics", ugh, don't ask!).

#13 Posted by Knight' on 09 May 2003 - 16:36: I always wondered why my PC would slow down for no reason at all... I suppose this was one of the reasons.

#14 Posted by budwizer on 09 May 2003 - 18:25: superrcat is correct in that there will not be a fix for this in either SP2 or a hotfix. When I found this and reported it to MS, the QFE team decided not to patch this since it was too big of a change in critical code and the Critical Resolution Engineer said they will not fix it and it will be fixed in Longhorn and Server 2003 (which it was).

#15 Posted by purush on 09 May 2003 - 19:06: I have made several right clicks with Task manager open and the cpu usuage indicates just over 15% and drops back to o after closing the menu. So there is not a problem here. I have ticked visual effects to 'Best performance' and still the cpu usuage does not excede the average 15%. What is the big fuss here I cannot understand.

(2 replies) #16 Posted by portprober on 09 May 2003 - 20:16: I have a PIII 800 E and this problem is very anoying. I have tried all the solutions mentioned but no luck with them. Not only does my CPU go up to 100% on a right click but explorer also stops responding for about 10 seconds before the right click menu appears. It seems to be an intermitent problem and only happend after SP1 was installed. This really slows things down. However, today I checked off "open each folder in a seperate proccess" and that seems to clear it up for the most part. So those of you having that problem sould try it. I also have SP2 1204 installed and it doesn fix the problem.

#17 Posted by rseiler on 10 May 2003 - 01:01: All I can do is add to the chorus who don't see it without the useless "effects" on. I never have those on and have therefore never seen this problem.

#18 Posted by AshMan on 10 May 2003 - 02:08: On my machines, the process only goes upto 16% for about a split second.

#19 Posted by nacs on 10 May 2003 - 18:16: Awesome. They've [i]acknowledged[/i] that the bug exists. No sh*t MS. Oh two [i]workarounds[/i]? Very nice of you. Let's get a patch without having to just buy Longhorn to fix this.

#20 Posted by Disco_Stu on 10 May 2003 - 19:15: I've seen this a bunch of times on two of my pc's, neither has any effects on. One of these days MS will get it right and simple things like right clicking or deleting a file won't lock up your whole desktop until the operation completes. I really wish someone would hack cleartype into win 2000 so I could go back to it.

#21 Posted by AMD_Dually on 10 May 2003 - 19:25: I have had this problem with XP from the start, and it drives me nuts. I purchased XP pre-release. Now with pre SP1, windows explorer would take up the processing power on a right click, then usually crash, and you would have to wait for windows to recover. Now with SP1, it usually wont crash explorer, but will stop things for a bit. Basically the CPU goes to 100%, and i cant do anything until it recovers, taking usually about 30 seconds. This behavior will usually end up getting worse the older the install of XP is. And the fix touted by Microsoft does not work either, I have had effects turned off on all of my installs. And this has happned on both machines. One is a Dual AMD 1.2ghz machine, the other an XP1800 machine, neither lacking in CPU or memory. And now to find out that this is part of the "XP Experience" AMD_Dually

#22 Posted by portprober on 10 May 2003 - 22:23: Just a follow up... My brother has virtually the same setup and HW that I do. The only difference is he uses WMP9 exclusively and it is his default media player. I use thrid party players for my media because MP9 sucks IMO. He doesn't have this right click issue. Very odd.

#23 Posted by insurektion on 11 May 2003 - 04:39: it di 100% on my old 400. it was annoying

#24 Posted by Gizzmo2k1 on 25 May 2003 - 08:37: On Windows 2003, I had to set the start menu delay to 1 instead of 0 and this fixed the problem. Seems to me this was also a problem with 98.

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